The Undefeated Mind

“The answer he found wasn’t, contrary to what many other forms of Buddhism suggest, that suffering arises from the frustration of our desires. Rather it was that suffering arises from our deluded thinking about the nature of life itself—specifically, from our deluded belief that we lack the power to overcome the obstacles that confront us. We don’t suffer, according to Nichiren Buddhism, because we face obstacles; we suffer because we face obstacles we don’t believe we can overcome. Even the state of continuous suffering—clinical depression—is considered to result from our being overwhelmed by a feeling of powerlessness.”

“This, then, is what it means to possess an undefeated mind: not just to rebound quickly from adversity or to face it calmly, without being pulled down by depression or anxiety, but also to get up day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year, decade after decade—even over the course of an entire lifetime—and attack the obstacles in front of us again and again until they fall, or we do. An undefeated mind isn’t one that never feels discouraged or despairing; it’s one that continues on in spite of it. Even when we can’t find a smile to save us, even when we’re tired beyond all endurance, possessing an undefeated mind means never forgetting that defeat comes not from failing but from giving up. An undefeated mind doesn’t fill itself with false hope, but with hopes to find real solutions, even solutions it may not want or like. An undefeated mind is itself what grants us access to the creativity, strength, and courage necessary to find those real solutions, viewing obstacles not as distractions or detours off the main path of our lives but as the very means by which we capture the lives we want. Victory may not be promised to any of us, but possessing an undefeated mind means behaving as though it is, as though to win we only need to wage an all-out struggle and work harder than everyone else, trying everything we can, and when that fails trying everything we think we can’t, in full understanding that we have no one on whom we can rely for victory but ourselves. Possessing an undefeated mind, we understand that there’s no obstacle from which we can’t create some kind of value. We view any such doubt as delusion. Everyone—absolutely everyone—has the capacity to construct an undefeatable mind, not just to withstand personal traumas, economic crises, or armed conflicts, but to triumph over them.”

“In this, resilience, I’m convinced is more like muscle size than body height: with effort it can indeed be increased.

For we can resist discouragement by articulating our life’s mission; accomplish that mission by making a great determination; overcome the obstacles that naturally arise when we make such a determination by changing poison into medicine; gain the strength to change poison into medicine by accepting responsibility and standing against injustice; endure pain by accepting it and loss by letting go of what we cannot keep; enjoy what we have by learning to appreciate it and help ourselves through trauma by helping others; conquer fear by leveraging our connections to the ones we love. And, finally, I realized, gain inspiration from others who’ve managed to forge an undefeated mind of their own.”

“That’s what worked for me. Also, when I was in college, I found that constantly thinking about what I wanted to do led me nowhere. But when I reframed the question, asking myself instead what kind of value I wanted to create, ideas began popping up. In fact, here’s another idea: Have your son try writing down fifty or so experiences he’s had so far that have brought him the most joy, and then have him figure out which ones involved contributing to the well-being of others and the mission statements he would craft for each of them. Then ask him to imagine being given an award by the president at the age of ninety for having spent his entire life dedicated to whichever one seems to him the most consequential. Whichever ‘award’ fills him with the greatest sense of pride—whichever makes him feel the greatest sense of satisfaction—then that’s the mission he should probably spend his life trying to fulfill.”

“And when our response to failure is to summon an even greater determination to succeed, vowing to get back up after being knocked down not just once but again and again each day and with every obstacle that rises up to challenge us—attacking them, as Nichiren Daishonin wrote, like a “lion king who unleashes the same power whether he traps a tiny ant or attacks a fierce animal”—then we’ll have found a treasure even more valuable than any apparently foolproof plan to reach our goal: the determination necessary to seek a better one when it fails. For in demonstrating to ourselves> that we can always summon more of it, our determination becomes to us like a good friend, its steady presence and our faith in its power imbuing us with confidence that no matter how many times we’ve failed, no matter how much we want to quit, victory can still be ours.

“When your determination changes,” Daisaku Ikeda, the third president of the Soka Gakki, writes, “everything will begin to move in the direction you desire. The moment you resolve to be victorious, every nerve and fiber in your being will immediately orient itself toward your success. On the other hand, if you think, ‘This is never going to work out,’ then at that instant every cell in your being will be deflated and give up the fight. Then everything really will move in the direction of failure.””

“From the Buddhist perspective, I told him, all of us have the capacity to make use of any circumstance, no matter how awful, to create value. This ability to “change poison into medicine,” as it is known in Nichiren Buddhism, makes plausible the transformation of even the most horrific tragedy into something that enables us to become happier. . . .

Believing in your ability to transform poison into medicine when you don’t know how, and often won’t except in retrospect, is difficult, I admit. But that’s the confidence you have to find. That’s the confidence that represents your greatest defense against discouragement.”

“We may think our advice represents the most valuable thing we have to offer those who suffer, but it pales in comparison to the power of our encouragement. Encouragement, at its heart, represents an attempt to make others feel that they have the strength, wisdom, courage, and ability to solve their problems themselves; it aims not to provide specific solutions but to make others believe that they can find those solutions on their own. With encouragement we express our belief in the indefatigable power of the human spirit to make what appears to be impossible possible, all in the hopes of awakening the same belief in those we’re trying to encourage.”

“Sometimes no matter how hard we pull, our lives don’t seem to move at all. Some struggles, in fact, take years or even decades to win (one of the titles bestowed upon the Buddha was “He Who Can Forbear”). But as long as we refuse to give in to despair and resolve to continue taking concrete action, some kind of victory is always possible. So when everything seems hopeless and you want to give up, no matter how much others may doubt you or you may doubt yourself, hold that knowledge fast to your heart and fix your mind unwaveringly on this most imperative of calls to action: never be defeated.”